This is a blog about marketing, gadgets, travel, privacy and cyberspace. Especially, but not exclusively, for those with an interest in everything that can make the life of a frequent traveller into something vaguely resembling normalcy.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Of course this was unavoidable. Google Earth makes viewing the Earth's surface from above so easy that it becomes an advertising medium.

Only the scale of this (75-by-110ft) is a bit disappointing. C'mon guys - you Americans can do better than this. I'm thinking a few square miles of coloured sand in the Nevada Desert here - in the shape of a roulette wheel, of course.

The Emirates pioneered the idea, with the Palm Islands. Who follows? Giant Olympic Rings circling the mountain tops around the Great Wall?

Plus, we need a descriptor. Earthboards? Adscapes? We're open for suggestions.

Of course we should've known: all that extra space in Business and First in the future has to come from somewhere. And there's no such thing as a free lunch. At least, not in the Economy Class of the future.

Airbus, the NY Times reports, is working on a proposal in which passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness. "To call it a seat would be misleading," said Volker Mellert, a physics professor at Oldenburg University in Germany, who has done research on airline seat comfort and has seen the design. No kidding.

Fortunately all of this is still on the drawing boards. But even current cattle class is getting more cramped as we blog, as new materials allow thinner seat backs that still fulfil strict safety regulations. Originally these seats were introduced under the motto "More Room Throughout Coach", but cost cutting measures put an end to that. Seats have been slid together and the campaign has quietly been withdrawn.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Everybody who has followed the news around Google's, Yahoo's, and more recently, Skype's activities in China knows it: people who think they can publish freely are bound to get into trouble. Big trouble. Off-limits subjects cover a wide range: democracy, human rights, Falun Gong. And indecent material, of course.

It now seems this chink in the armour has been picked up with gusto by China's ever-entrepreneurial commercial sector. Another sign that commercial interests are driving significant change in China's society, despite the fact that commerce and politics are being kept strictly separated.

Friday, April 21, 2006

For years Western governments and companies alike have lambasted China for its lack of protection of -mainly Western- brand names, resulting in rampant piracy. If you've ever set one foot on Shanghai's Nanjing Road or Beijing's Wangfujing Avenue, you know how ubiquitous and easy to obtain fake goods are in China, from $10 Rolex watches to $5 Louis Vuitton bags and Hermès scarves.

Even with new brand protection laws in place (a condition for China's much-desired WTO membership) suing sellers of fake goods is nigh impossible, as most of these are fly-by-night operations and the Chinese judicial system isn't the most efficient in the world either.

So it's good to see that finally luxury brand maker Louis Vuitton has succeeded in getting a favourable verdict against a seller of fake LV branded handbags, getting awarded Y300,000 (US$40,000) in damages from ... French supermarket chain Carrefour.

Turns out, roadside sellers of gazillions of fake watches, handbags and scarves are untouchable in China. But a global retail chain with 37 fake LV bags on the shelves of its Shanghai hypermarket is an easy target.

As the old Chinese saying goes: life ain't always fair for a sitting duck.

'Gu Ge' are the newly chosen Chinese characters, which means as much as 'Valley Song' or 'Harvest Song', and they have undoubtedly been chosen for their combinination of sound similarity with 'Google', and a positive meaning.

Choosing a Chinese name for your brand is a tricky game, much like navigating a minefield. A cause célèbre are Coca-Cola's early Chinese years, during which it was marketed under four characters with the correct Ko-Ka-Ko-La sound, that unfortunately meant something like Bite Your Wax Tadpole. The story goes that the name had been chosen by a Cantonese-speaking secretary in Coca-Cola's Guangzhou head office, who had no idea what was at stake.

Sinds the early 90s Coca-Cola in China is known as 'Ke Kou Ke Le', which is a pun on 'Tasteful Soft Drink' and 'Happy Tasting Drink' respectively. 'Ke Le' has even become the Chinese word for 'soft drink'.

Over to Google, whose advisers must've been keen on avoiding a blooper like this. But alas, a minefield has many mines. 'Valley Song' doesn't only sound rural in English, but also in Chinese. Which is decidedly uncool in the eyes of Chinese digerati, who populate the glass and steel canyons of Beijing's and Shanghai's business district and do not like to be reminded of the undeveloped, uncivilized and utterly poor agricultural hinterland that still takes up most of China.

Unhappy Chinese Google fans have even set up an online petition under the unambiguous name NoGuGe.com, where thousands of signatures have been collected since its inception last Wednesday. Google should be cool, and 'Gu Ge' doesn't cut it.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Rolex, the company that practically invented wristwatch marketing a couple of decades ago, has since studiously ignored just about every trend in watch land. The model lineup, with legendary models like the Daytona chronograph, the Sea Dweller diver's watch, and the President gentleman's watch, has remained basically the same during the last, say, 40 years or so.

The most eye catching trend in watches is their increase in size: whereas average men's watches used to measure typically 30-35mm in diameter 15 years ago, 40-45mm is now the norm. Women's wristwatches grew from 20-25mm to 30-35mm.

Apparently this is starting to become a problem for Rolex. So what do you do in such a situation? Either one of two things:

FET will launch the QR code phone with a marketing campaign linked to the Da Vinci Code. Customers who sign up for a contract including the Sharp WX-T91 will be able to participate in a treasure hunt, with prizes like a luxury Da Vinci Code trip to France for two, movie tickets, or goodies with 'Da Vinci Code Classic Paintings' printed on them.

FET claims that QR is the emerging standard for mobile response in Taiwan, which makes it the second QR market after Japan, where QR codes are taking off in a big way with tens of millions of handsets already QR capable.

The methods have first been put to use in the 2004-2005 China E-Commerce Report, a survey that covers 6 industry sectors across all of China's 31 provinces. Being the first major country where such a reporting standard is implemented may sound impressive, although China probably has a better starting position than others in enforcing compliance.

And many others, as startups around the world race to provide the market with the killer targeting app that will give us the next Google. Speaking of which, I wouldn't be surprised if Google itself wouldn't make a move into this space, given the richness of their data and the fact that they don't shy away from going into radio advertising either.

As is pretty much the fashion in articles about this subject, it closes off with "Pretty cool stuff — and maybe just a little scary." Scaremongering? Well, it does tell you that there's a touchy nerve among consumers that can easily turn into antagonism and damage responsiveness after the newness has worn off - call it the Minority Report effect.

But these are fascinating techniques, and it would be a pity if the opportunity to better target and lower annoyance levels in this advertising-soaked world would be spoiled by privacy scares.

For that reason perhaps it's better to stick to techniques that leave the initiative with the consumer. QR and Colorzip codes leave it up to the consumer to point his or her camera at the ad and click to download the information in the code, rather than suddenly finding something's going on in your phone and wondering where the Hell it's come from. And what about the Seattle experiment in which storefront loudspeakers start blaring personalized messages when you pass by? Creepy...

Thursday, April 13, 2006

More news from the marketing frontlines in Singapore: here's the outcome of a small war between two of Singapore's, erm, "No. 1" society magazines.

Singapore Tatler claimed the title in a brochure calling itself "the best magazine for advertising" compared to Prestige and The Peak, its two nearest competitors. Tatler based its claims on research by Synovate, a global market research firm.

Both competitors sued. The Peak settled out of court last December, but Prestige pressed on. And after six embarassing days in court, Tatler threw in the towel. Total damage: S$300,000 (about US$200k), as Tatler will pay Prestige's legal costs as well.

Turns out, Synovate's research was conducted only among people attending Tatler's events. Synovate, that touts itself as one of the world's top global market research firms, should be the most embarassed party here. To conduct an exit survey at Tatler's events and report the results is one thing. But to actually use these results to corroborate claims about your market position (Synovate actually vetted the brochure and wrote the introductory letter!) is something else indeed.

Should future dictionary makers need a clear example for the lemma 'bias', this looks like a good place to start...(Source: The Straits Times)

Singapore has its way of sending signals to the business community. Fining a small firm S$150,000 is one of them.

It all started on Chinese New Year, when MyGlobalFun, a Chinese client of mobile services provider mTouche sent 300,000 MMS New Year Greetings to mTouche's subscriber database. That's a privacy violation in itself, but things went rapidly downhill two weeks later, when $1 charges started to appear on the recipients' phone bills.

MyGlobalFun's messages were not intended to be free, as it turned out. Protests were rife and after angry letters started to appear in the newspaper, the local telcos (SingTel, M1 and StarHub) quickly reversed the charges. But on February 21st mTouche was slapped with a six-month suspension to conduct business in Singapore, and now there's also the S$150,000 (around US$100k) fine.

Meanwhile, fly-by-night operation MyGlobalFun has disappeared from the radar screen as quickly as it turned up. And the phone number list circulates somewhere in China.

Singaporean subscribers don't need to be too worried, though. The IDA (InfoCommm Development Authority of Singapore) has warned the telcos to prevent illegitime billing via their monthly statements in the future. Trust me, they'll all remember mTouche.(Source: The Straits Times)

But as far as I can see this was the first junk email that was actually called 'spam', a name that was derived from the famous Monty Python sketch in which the word 'spam' is used 94 times. The unfortunate couple unleashed a torrent of criticism with their actions, even giving rise to the invention of special cancelbots that were sent out on the Usenet with the specific purpose of deleting Canter&Siegel messages.

UPDATE 4/12/2006 5:48PM: The mayor of Skarsterlan, the small Frisian municipality in which this pastoral ad tableau takes place, has ordered the immediate removal of the sheep ads. Skarsterlan fears that motorists will be overly distracted while navigating the motorway. (Thanks Molblog)

And that's not all of it: the media giant is breaking ground on a new business model for advertising breaks as well. According to the Wall Street Journal (paid access) a choice of ads will be offered during commercial breaks, all from the same advertiser. The viewer can choose between several types of commercial, with varying degrees of interactivity.

This is a novel approach, obviously aimed at capturing the interest of "Generation C": consumers who increasingly want control over creative content, whether it be entertainment or commercials. Possibly something for mainstream TV advertising by the time DVRs become ubiquitous?

Sunday, April 09, 2006

The Muhammad cartoons took around four months to develop into a full-blown worldwide international incident, from their posting in Jyllands-Posten on September 30th, 2005, to the eruption of riots in the beginning of February, 2006. (See the excellent summary on Wikipedia and there's even a website that keeps tally of the Cartoon wars' body count.)

So it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for protests to erupt around the display of bikini designs based on the national flags of participants in the 2006 World Soccer Championships, among which numerous flags of Islamic nations.

The Cartoon Wars were triggered by a group of Danish imams who spent a lot of time during a tour of the Middle East distributing a dossier on the offensive materials. Will others go to the same lengths to trigger Bikini Wars?

Looking back, you wonder why this took so long. All the ingedients were there: Asia is the home of karaoke, the art of lip synching in front of a private audience and a TV playing sound tracks; and then there was the aftermath of the Tammy NYP affair that showed that even Singaporean youths are not afraid to put their most intimate moments on video and on the web.

So here's our next Big Trend: combining karaoke with a web cam.

Cute indeed. And quite a bit more innocent than posting sex videos, one could say.

As an added bonus, the Back Dormitory Boys, as they are known now, show that you can become a celebrity in the process, not only with dedicated fan sites but even with your own TV show.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Singapore is not a free country. Normally you don't notice this. It's a transparent society, you can move around freely and you can write what you want as long as it's not about politics. Actually, not a bad place at all. So where's the lack of freedom?

In daily life, mainly in the fact that you're not allowed to form a society or association, or speak in public, unless you have the explicit permission of the government. Which doesn't bother you very often, since most people don't make a habit of that.

There are the little things, of course. As a member of the Association of Dutch Businessmen I once asked the Chairman why his monthly foreword in the society's magazine was in English, while it was written by a Dutchman and only read by countrymen? The answer was simple: had to be in English, otherwise the censors couldn't read it.

But now it's General Election time, and that's when the lack of democracy really shows. Today, in the face of the impending election campaigns Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts, Dr Balaji Sadavisan, laid down the law. After all, we don't want misunderstandings, what with all those new media around.

So here are the rules: campaigning is allowed in chatrooms, discussion forums and websites, but not in podcasts, videocasts, or blogs. Furthermore, websites and blogs that want to make a habit of publishing political contents (the occasional outcry is apparently exempt from this, so this post is probably OK) have to be registered with the Media Development Authority (MDA). The MDA will monitor these sites and screen them for election advertising, which is not allowed.

Email and SMS can be used under similar constraints, but Dr Balaji added ominously that "However, individuals seeking to use mass email and mass SMS to influence people, or to affect the outcome of an election, should realize that they are still governed by the laws of the land. And these include libel."

These last four words carry special weight in a country where opposition leaders in the past have routinely been driven into bankruptcy by libel suits brought by senior members of the ruling party, the PAP.

Interesting modus operandi for a country that seeks to play a prominent role in the use of new media.(Source: The Straits Times)

Google has joined the hordes of companies that employ the vermin of Capitol Hill: lobbyists. You can just see the famous motto "Don't Be Evil" hanging askew in a dark corner, in a cracked frame on a rusty nail. Cobwebs partially obscure your view of the statement that once proudly adorned Google's gleaming lobby.

The rationale for this move is evident: privacy is rapidly becoming a major issue, in the US as much as elsewhere. And Google is sitting squarely in the middle of it. It wants to organize and hence store and handle the world's information, much of which is of a personal nature. Pictures, videos, emails, your search and surfing behaviour, together they form an increasingly complete picture of your life.

Google is headed straight for a position in the middle of a tug of war between maintaining privacy and giving others access to private data. It is continually signalling its intention to handle this in the consumer's best interest.

So far, so good. But Google is also consistently indicating that it will figure out our best interests on its own, without others looking over their shoulders. Hiring lobbyists fits that picture. So far, not good enough any more.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Europe has universal privacy and data protection legislation. Japan has such a law since April 1st last year. China is working on one. Meanwhile the US privacy and data protection landscape is rapidly turning into an inexplicable mess. Let's look at a few examples.

Privacy is well on its way to become the most important human right of the 21st century. In an increasingly information-based, nay information-dependant society, no civilized country can afford to fail its citizens in protection against identity theft and other abuses of their personal data.

The US needs an umbrella privacy and data protection law to guards its citizens' rights to a life without fear of being invaded, robbed of their identities, or having the most intimate details of their lives exposed. And it needs it now, lest it becomes the 'Dirty Old Man of Privacy'.

Back to blogging after ten days in which the day job got the upper hand. This was my first project in the city where I live, and an opportunity to see the city from another side. This view is towards the Central Business District from Suntec City, across the river.